Effective education, kindergarten to retirement

Mitch Daniels:

Last week I wrote that building the best possible business environment in America was the key to attracting jobs and investment to Indiana. Our state has recently achieved top-tier rankings as a place to do business, with low taxes and utility costs, reduced regulation, new infrastructure investments, and the highest credit rating in history. But we will not maximize these advantages if we do not also have enough well-educated workers. Jobs and investment that would otherwise come to Indiana will wind up somewhere else if we can't provide a large enough pool of skilled labor.

As our economy diversifies, jobs in all sectors, including manufacturing, increasingly require skills and knowledge beyond high school. Right now, too many of our workers lack the education and training they need to perform -- or even qualify for -- the kinds of skilled jobs that we want to bring to or grow here in Indiana. Thousands of jobs are open and waiting in fields such as information technology, health and logistics, but are not being filled because of this skills mismatch.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 28, 2008 8:10 AM
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